The Paperback Warrior website and podcast

 

Greetings!

Those of you who follow the VWOP Twitter account have probably heard of Paperback Warrior. Paperback Warrior, as you can tell by the above image, is a website devoted to reviewing hard-boiled crime, mystery, men’s adventure, espionage, and western novels. Like the pulp novelists of yore, Eric and Tom crank ’em out, […]

Book and movie review: Invasion U.S.A.

In 1985, Cannon Films, the legendary studio behind a load of mostly bad but often fun low-budget films, released the Chuck Norris vehicle Invasion U.S.A. The film was reviled by critics–Roger Ebert gave it a whopping 1.5 stars, while Leonard Maltin gave it the notorious BOMB rating and called it “Repellant in the […]

Trent goes off-topic

Greetings, all!

This site started out as a list of books on Geocities. It has evolved and grown, year after year (or most years, anyway), and eventually, for blog fodder and my own amusement, I started adding reviews and some coverage of crime fiction and film beyond things directly related to Parker or Donald […]

Book review: Perfidia by James Ellroy

Perfidia is the first volume of the Second L.A. Quartet. The L.A. Quartet–The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz–covers the years 1946 to 1958 in Los Angeles. The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy–American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s a Rover–covers 1958 to 1972, on a national scale.

The Violent World of Mack Bolan

Reader Matt points out that the Executioner has been plundering Parker-related book titles recently…

I have plundered these images from MackBolan.com.

Gold Eagle, the division of Harlequin that published men’s adventure books including The Executioner/Mack Bolan, is being closed down after Harlequin’s acquisition by HarperCollins. I expect Mack will land on his […]

Non-Westlake Scores: John D. MacDonald’s The Deep Blue Goodbye and Nightmare in Pink

NB: A version of this post also appears on Existential Ennui.

I’m in the midst of a series of posts on vintage softcovers over on Existential Ennui, and I’ve reached a pair of paperbacks I was basically badgered into buying by one of the regular commenters on both The Violent World of […]

A letter of note

Shameless plug time, I’m afraid. Earlier today I posted a letter on Existential Ennui by British crime/spy/thriller writer Gavin Lyall (of whom I’m a huge admirer), which makes for fascinating reading if you’ve any interest in matters to do with publishing (which I know some of you have). The letter dates from […]

Books which begat films on Existential Ennui

Just a quick plug for a series of posts over on Existential Ennui—one of which Trent kindly linked in his “News for week ending”—on books which begat perhaps more famous films, some of which may be of interest to Violent World of Parker regulars. I cross-posted one of the earliest missives—on Brian […]

Review: Death Wish by Brian Garfield, basis for the 1974 movie

NB: A version of this post also appears on Existential Ennui.

This week, over on Existential Ennui, I’ve been blogging about books which begat perhaps more famous films. Thus far I’ve covered two movies: Where Eagles Dare and Jaws, both of which are at least the equal of their source texts, and […]

An interview with spy novelist Jeremy Duns, and more beautiful British book jackets

As Trent’s already mentioned—and nice scores there, sir—I won’t be blogging for a short while due to moving house—although I might, if you’re (un)lucky, find time to post something next week; we’ll have to see how we get on with the move. But before I vanish, I just wanted to draw your […]